HAMMOND | East Chicagoan Jermaine Taylor will find out if he was guilty of resisting law enforcement before he can proceed with his excessive force lawsuit against the officer who shot him in the arm during the same incident.

Former Hammond police Sgt. Timothy Thomas, a 26-year veteran of the force, was terminated following the incident after admitting he was accompanied the night of the shooting by an armed civilian wearing Hammond police armor.

The civilian was Nick Kokot, an East Chicago policeman who was not on the force at the time. Thomas has since admitted that he, not Kokot, fired the shot that left Taylor with a "claw hand," court records and lawyers said.

Thomas said in court records he saw a group of people shooting at a streetlight on New Year's Eve 2005, and that he yelled to them to raise their hands. Though Taylor was nearby, he claimed not to be part of the group, and was shot by Thomas when he reached into his pockets.

Thomas fired multiple rounds at Taylor with an AR-15, a magazine-fed autoloading rifle. Taylor fled the scene but was arrested at an emergency room later that night with a gunshot wound.

The shooting spawned two sets of court actions: a criminal charge of resisting arrest against Taylor and a federal civil rights lawsuit against Thomas and the Police Department.

Both legal actions were proceeding simultaneously until Friday, when U.S. District Magistrate Andrew Rodovich ordered the federal case to stop until the resolution of the criminal case.

Steve Kurowski, who is defending Thomas, said he agreed with Rodovich's order, and a conviction would make the civil lawsuit more of an "uphill battle" for Taylor.

David Gladish, the lawyer representing Taylor in the federal lawsuit against Thomas, said the two legal cases are unrelated.

"You can't just shoot somebody," Gladish said. "He can be a criminal, but you can't shoot him unless you're in fear for your life."